Tag: Knocked Up

It’s 2011 and time for the return of the Friday night news dump

January 7, 2011 /

I haven’t done this in awhile and I know I’m missing a bunch of stories from early in the week, but you’ll read this and you’ll like it, damn it!

* Mike Fleming is claiming a “toldja” on the news that Elijah Wood will be appearing in “The Hobbit” as Frodo Baggins who is, I believe, not yet born during the events of Tolkien’s original children book. The rumor from earlier in the week has now been confirmed and nothing will ever be the same.

* Mr. Fleming also has the latest on speed-crazed Hollywood buying the rights to a book that has yet to be published and the remake rights on a documentary almost no one has seen. At least we know what the documentary’s about, and it does sound like material for a good movie — except, of course, it’s already a movie.

* Robert De Niro will be heading the jury at Cannes this year. This will be his third go-round in the gig.

* There’s been a ton of quibbling on why it’s not a sequel and maybe not even a spin-off, but the fact remains that Judd Apatow is building his next film around the terrific characters from “Knocked Up” played by Paul Rudd and Apatow’s real-life wife, Leslie Mann. I have to admit I find these kind of fine distinctions to be marketing-driven annoyances. Novelists cast supporting characters from past books in leading roles in newer books all the time and no one calls these books anything other than “novels.” Novelists like Sinclair Lewis and Kurt Vonnegut treat their worlds like the Marvel Universe, so why can’t there be an Apatow-verse?

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* Ricky Gervais has apparently signed up to play Mole in an upcoming version of “Wind in the Willows.” Ordinarily, I’d be a little bit excited about this news, but this is a project coming from Ray Griggs, who I frankly wonder about for a number of reasons. I’ve written about him before, at least he had the good sense to hire WETA in on the project. Still, if I were a friend of Gervais’s I advise him to stay away. It has a funny smell about it.

* Oscar winning writer-director Paul Haggis is taking his complaints with the Church of Scientology public in an upcoming book-length expose to be written by Lawrence Wright. Haggis is a former member of the church. I’d tell you what I think of Scientology, but that’s a whole other blog post. I will say I think this will be big.

* Danny Strong played the greatest geek ever on “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer” and went on to become a respected screenwriter with his script for the Jay Roach television movie about the 2000 election, “Recount.” Now he’s back in the genre world with a gig rewriting something called “Earth Defense Force,” which Sam Raimi is producing.

* Stan the Man got his star on Hollywood Blvd. Excelsior!

* Ron Howard wants you to know that the “Arrested Development” movie is really still happening. Sure, why not?

Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External Movies, Movie Comedies, Movies, News, Sci-Fi Movies

Met Them at the Greek — a press day chat with Russell Brand, Jonah Hill, Rose Byrne and Nicholas Stoller of “Get Him to the Greek”

June 3, 2010 /

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If you saw “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” — and I hope you have as its one of the stronger comedies to be made over the last several years — you’ll likely have noticed the strong comic chemistry between British comedy sensation Russell Brand as three-quarters insane, recovering addict rock star Aldous Snow and Jonah Hill (“Superbad“) as a resort waiter and somewhat overly devoted fan of Snow’s. Well, you’re not the only one, and so we have the somewhat slapdash, sometimes brilliant, and ultimately winning new comedy, “Get Him to the Greek,” which once again brings us Brand as Aldous Snow, who, since the events of “Sarah Marshall” has suffered a failed marriage to rocker Jackie Q (Rose Byrne), had a seven-year old son, and removed the “recovering” from his addiction — kind of impressive since “Sarah Marshall” was only two years ago.

Nevertheless, having fallen headlong off the wagon, Snow needs help arriving on-time and semi-cognizant for an important TV appearance, a sound check, and a special comeback performance at L.A.’s Greek Theater. The task falls to ambitious young record company assistant Aaron Green (Hill, playing a different character than in “Sarah Marshall”), a huge fan of Snow’s in a sweet but rocky relationship with his improbably adorable doctor girlfriend (Elizabeth Moss of “Mad Men“). Frequently vomit-stained hijinks ensue as Green and Snow barely survive a number of unfortunate events, including a nearly apocalyptic visit to the set of “The Today Show,” one of the most truly mad Las Vegas sequences in film history, and the kind of freaky three-ways that would make most porn producers blanch. It’s all wrapped up with the sort of good-hearted traditional morality which reminds us that the producer is the Walt Disney of male-centric, R-rated comedies, Judd Apatow.

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Actors, Actresses, Celebrities, External Entertainment, External Movies, Interviews, Movie Comedies, Movies

Will “Funny People” be a sad clown at the box office?

July 30, 2009 /

Whatever my reaction to it winds up being when I finally see “Funny People,” Judd Apatow has my respect. As a producer, writer, and sometime director of mostly R-rated comedies, he’s enjoyed a level of unusually consistent box office and artistic/critical success over a large number of movies that only Pixar, which takes much longer to make its very different brand of crowd-pleaser, can top right now.

Making good movies requires taking risks, and Apatow is taking one right now with a film that is being described as a tragicomedy and with his only hedge being a cast dominated by popular comic actors led by Adam Sandler. That the film seems to be largely dividing critics and generating confused reactions would, if I were Apatow or Universal, make me a little nervous. Actually, Universal may be more nervous than Apatow. As Nikki Finke and everyone else is reporting tonight, the hyphenate comedy guy just inked a 3-picture deal with them, so he’s set for the time being.

Variety‘s Dave McNary reports that box office predictions vary pretty widely for the film, from the low twenty millions to the mid-thirties. No wonder. A casual look around the wilds of Rotten Tomatoes indicates that the Apatow’s third feature as a director after “The 40 Year-Old Virgin” and “Knocked Up” is far different piece of work and what you might call “difficult.” As far as I can remember, this has almost never indicated an immediate box office success — better to have critics universally detest the movie, it seems, than be conflicted. Movies that elicit this kind of reaction have more than once emerged years later as cult hits or even, as in the case of “Blade Runner,” legitimate classics. On the other hand, Adam Sandler’s name will count for something, and the presence of Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill, among others, certainly won’t hurt. But, on the other other hand, we’ve seen the power of stars amount to less than expected results more than once over the last year or so.

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Action Movies, Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External Movies, Horror Movies, Movie Comedies, Movie Dramas, Movies, News, Reviews, Sci-Fi Movies

Entourage 6.2 – Amongst Friends

July 19, 2009 /

Last week’s season premiere received a bigger negative response than I expected. In fact, I’m kind of surprised that more of these detractors didn’t come out of the woodwork last year, when there was actually something to complain about. At least then it looked like the show was taking a turn for the worse, because as far as I’m concerned, the first two episodes of the new season have been nothing but classic “Entourage.” If you’re not enjoying it now, then I find it hard to believe you ever did. Sure, it might seem a bit repetitive after six years of the same thing, but the chemistry is still great and the story arc for this season actually shows real promise.

As for boys still being boys, well, that’s very much in full swing at the beginning of the episode when Turtle launches into a rant about how Katherine Heigl’s character from “Knocked Up” would never bang the guy played by Seth Rogen. (Our own John Paulsen would likely agree.) Apparently, being funny doesn’t make up for being ugly. I don’t know what that means for Turtle and Jamie-Lynn (he claims that girls think he’s cute, even though he’s always had a hard time convincing them to have sex with him), but for the time being, they’re very much the happy couple – so much so that Jamie-Lynn finally makes their relationship official at Vince’s big movie premiere. The rest of the guys score dates as well. Vince brings some chick he hooked up with last weekend, Drama convinces a vivacious retail clerk to tag along, and Eric goes with Sloan… as friends.

Obviously, the ever-changing relationship between Eric and Sloan is going to play a big part this year, especially now that they’ve introduced the superhot Alexis Dziena as Eric’s new “friend,” Ashley. I mean, he didn’t even seem that interested in the girl at first (her appearance at the party definitely caused some awkwardness between him and Sloan), but after confessing his true feelings to Sloan and getting denied, he was more than happy to use Ashley as a last-minute back-up plan. Sloan’s text message apology (what, she was too busy to call?) seems to indicate she cares more than she’s letting on, and you can be sure that once Eric finally starts getting serious with Ashley, Sloan is only going to want him back.

Also, is it just me, or does it seem like Ari doesn’t even work for Vince anymore? With the exception of the odd run-in with his star client, he’s been spending most of his time these days with Andrew, who Ari discovers may or may not be having an affair with a junior agent. It’s the kind of news that Ari doesn’t want to hear, especially since he’s just gone out of his way to convince Mrs. Ari to become friends with Andrew’s wife, Marlo. He’s urged Andrew to put an end to the fling before his wife becomes any the wiser, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that this is going to end very badly. And poor Lloyd is going to be one that gets punished for it. Oh well, we knew Gary Cole wouldn’t be around for the long haul. It was just a matter of who would be the one to push him out the door.

Entourage, External TV, TV, TV Comedies

AskMen and Ye Shall Receive HotWomen

January 21, 2009 /

AskMen.com has announced its 9th annual list of the “Top 99 Most Desirable Women,” and, man, did their readers come out in droves to make their opinions known. More than ten million votes were cast in this, the site’s ranking of women who best represent the qualities of the ideal girlfriend or wife, but since this is Premium Hollywood, we thought we’d take a gander at a handful of the list’s actress inclusions and offer up a few of our favorite film and TV appearances by these women.

(#7) Scarlett Johansson

Best Work: The obvious pick here is “Lost in Translation,” of course, since it’s generally considered to be Johansson’s breakthrough performance, but she also received a great deal of praise for her turn in Peter Webber’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring.” With that said, however, let’s not forget about her work for Terry Zwigoff in “Ghost World,” which was strong enough to earn her the long-term career that her co-star, Thora Birch, was unable to maintain.
Guiltiest Pleasures: “The Perfect Score.” It’s a spiritual descendant of “The Breakfast Club,” but while it’s in no way as good as that John Hughes classic, it’s a pleasant teen comedy with a nice ensemble cast. Also worth catching on a rainy Sunday afternoon is “Eight Legged Freaks,” a slight but fun throwback to ’50s sci-fi monster flicks.
A Must to Avoid: “The Spirit.” 50,000,000 movie critics can’t be wrong.

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